


Looking For Atlantis

by callunavulgari



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Christmas, M/M, Mutual Pining, Post-Canon, Post-Season/Series Finale, Reunions, Ten Years Later
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-21
Updated: 2018-12-21
Packaged: 2019-09-23 22:58:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17089343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/callunavulgari/pseuds/callunavulgari
Summary: Hey Rodney,the postcard reads.Go see a movie.





	Looking For Atlantis

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bshiat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bshiat/gifts).



> [Atlantis by Shane Koyczan and the Long Story Short.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlN-MSEoLHc) Click on the link, close your eyes, and listen. Then proceed to read.
> 
> Fun fact: I was 2k into a soulmate AU before I stumbled across a post with the prompt for "that annoying asshole who keeps kicking the back of your seat at the movie theater" and realized that I wanted to write that. While I was fumbling through ideas - whether I wanted this to be a first meeting, if I wanted it to be a reunion, if I wanted it to be a punk rock au where Rodney had a nose ring - I ended up listening to Atlantis again. I closed my eyes. I listened. 
> 
> And when I opened them, I knew what kind of story I wanted to write. Hope you like this one, friend. I enjoyed writing it for you. Happy holidays!

> **"And in terms of proof, love can be demonstrated in giving. Our lives consist of the efforts we give, in swimming towards the lost continent, where you are rumoured to be living."** \- _Shane Koyczan_

 

This wasn’t what Rodney imagined Earth after Atlantis would be like. He’d imagined more fanfare, for one. Interviews, talk shows alongside attractive celebrities, scientific journals. His name on the front page of the New York Times. A shiny new car. A hot new girlfriend who didn’t fart or hog the blankets at night, who hung off his arm during work events and said things like, “wow” and “Rodney, you’re so smart.”

He hadn’t expected… this.

He hadn’t expected Earth - the planet that he’d spent a good deal more than half of his life on - to feel _wrong_.

He hadn’t expected the slow, inexorable end of friendships. That continental drift that seemed to naturally occur when people just picked up and left. How slowly, year after year, they just… forgot to meet up. Too busy, they would say, and it would make sense, because he was busy too. And then they would ask, can we reschedule?

And then they forgot to call. Or email. Or write.

Until finally, he was left with a phone call a year. Maybe a Christmas card. A birthday card too, if he was lucky.

Not all things were bad, of course. He had a lovely, stupidly overpriced apartment that overlooked the San Francisco bay, where if he squinted _just right_ he could imagine that he was seeing the reflection of the sun glinting off of Atlantis’ shields. He had a job. A cat. A car that was, if not quite as shiny as he’d imagined, perfectly respectable.

It was just a quieter existence, that was all.

He woke up, he went to work, he spent thirteen or fourteen hours in the labs managing a team of scientists who weren’t completely hopeless, and then he went home and went to bed. If it was a good day, they let him into Atlantis, where he drifted along ghostly corridors until they realized he really couldn’t fix anything, and ejected him from the premises post-haste.

If it was a bad day, he didn’t get out of bed at all.

Nobody shot at him. No one expected him to explore new planets where the foliage was designed to eat him. There was minimal yelling, significantly less explosions, and the lack of high-stress situations was probably doing something good for his body. Probably.

It was just _boring_.

The first few months were all right, when he still had Teyla, Ronon, and Sheppard to pass the time with. When he still had Jennifer to come home to at night. When they still thought they might get Atlantis working again.

Nine years.

Nine _years_ of no Atlantis. No Pegasus galaxy. No _friends_.

He still got the yearly calls. For Christmas and birthdays, he would be guaranteed one call from each of them. A long chat with Teyla over the course of lunch, his cell tucked carefully under his chin. Something short and gruff from Ronon. An awkward, but heartfelt well-wishing from Jennifer. Radek and Carson, when they didn’t call him and ramble for hours, would occasionally surprise him with a visit, and the three of them would have dinner and talk and drink until they were summarily kicked out of the restaurant an hour after closing.

From Sheppard, he gets postcards.

Kansas and Missouri. Idaho and Georgia. Hawaii and Nebraska. Just postcards - worn and crinkled things that probably lived in his pockets for weeks before he remembered to actually mail them. More often than not, they were left blank, except for Rodney’s address scrawled messily in the upper left corner in John’s familiar chicken scratch. Every once in awhile Rodney would be gifted with a coffee stain or a smear of ink where the address hadn’t dried quickly enough before John whisked it up off of whatever surface he’d been writing on and stuffed it back into his pocket.

Once, there was a perfect thumbprint in graphite in the very center of the card - an accident, a signature, or just John’s way of being a dick - Rodney wasn’t sure. But that card was the one he brought down off of his fridge the most, worrying at his lip in front of his refrigerator in the middle of the night, eyes fixed on that solitary thumbprint, because he just couldn’t quite figure out what he was missing.

Three days before Christmas, Rodney’s just coming in from a long day off work when he finds the new card crammed under his front door. He frowns down at it for awhile, stuck half in, half out of his doorway, the postcard framed between his loafers. It seems to be from a little town in Nevada a couple hundred miles to the East, where the balmy shores of California give way to hot sands and endless craggy highway.

Too close to Area 51 to be a coincidence, but that’s not his business. Not anymore.

Rodney shuffles his way across the linoleum until he can drop his briefcase and coffee mug on the kitchen island. His briefcase knocks into the corner of the glass bowl sitting there, and Rodney has to make a distracted grab for one of the fake plastic oranges before it can go tumbling off the counter.

He misses, and watches as the orange disappears under his kitchen table.

The bowl and the fruit had been another gift from Sheppard. One of the first after Rodney bought the place. A fruit bowl full of fake citrus, perfect decoration for someone allergic to the stuff.

He leaves the orange to rot under the furniture and turns towards the refrigerator, scouring it for a free magnet. He’s halfway to getting the card up next to the rest when something on the back catches his eye - a smear of black in the very center.

 _Hey Rodney_ , the postcard reads. _Go see a movie_.

Rodney blinks down at it. Gently, he touches the scrawled message with the pad of his thumb, as if to make better sense of it.

Go see a movie. What kind of message is that?

“Merry Christmas to you too, Sheppard,” he mutters with a scoff, firmly wedging the postcard beneath the cat-shaped magnet he’d bought himself a month previous for this very occasion.

He looks at the postcard for another minute, sitting happily next to the one Sheppard had sent him two years previous, where a fat Santa in a speedo is riding a sleigh drawn by a horde of maniacally gleeful dolphins.

This year’s postcard is fairly unremarkable compared to that one, featuring a picturesque little town that could have been from anywhere west of the Mississippi River if it wasn’t for the glimpse of one of those kooky little shops that cropped up more and more the closer you got to Area 51. A green alien winks out at Rodney through a street window.

Rodney flips it over again, so that the only thing visible is the ordinary cardstock bearing its cryptic message in blue ink. He puts it back on the fridge like that, and then stares at it a little longer.

 _Go see a movie_.

A quick glance at the microwave tells him that it’s 8:47 PM on a Wednesday. He could… probably make that work. Probably.

Once he figures out where the nearest theater is.

 

He makes it to the last showing of Aquaman twenty minutes late, which fortunately for him means that after collecting his popcorn and slushie from the surly looking teenager manning the concession stand, he walks into the theater just as the movie is starting.

It isn’t a full theater by any means. A group college students take up a couple of the middle rows, only recognizable by their colorful array of hairstyles and the semi-permanent air of exhaustion that lingers around them like some kind of miasma. There’s an older gentlemen near the back noisily slurping a fountain drink who looks as if he hasn’t been out of the house since the 90’s. And then there’s a couple kids who look about twelve snickering and throwing popcorn at each other in the top most row.

Rodney chooses one of the first rows he sees, not necessarily because he’s enamored with the idea of being so close to the screen, but because he doesn’t want to be anywhere near the crossfire when those kids realize that there are other targets in the theater besides their friends. With a heavy sigh, he collapses onto an off-colored seat cushion that he thinks may have been mauve in a former life. The whole thing creaks alarmingly under him, and he spends a good thirty seconds arranging himself so that the arms aren’t pinching uncomfortably at his waistband.

The movie isn’t horrible, much to his surprise. It’s not great, but it’s moderately engaging, and has two relatively attractive human beings gracing the screen ninety percent of the time. It’s engaging enough that he barely notices when the twelve year olds incite a some kind of farting competition amongst themselves that a couple of the college kids decide that it’s in their best interest to escalate. He’s still half asleep in his popcorn, but staring mindlessly into a bright rectangle helps.

Maybe half an hour into the movie he notices someone slinking into the theater out of the corner of his eye, but is too invested in licking the salt and butter off of his fingers to _really_ notice. If they want to movie hop, then whatever. Props to them. He does notice at least a little bit when they take the seat directly behind him.

Then the guy starts kicking the back of his chair.

It isn’t a constant thing. The first kick Rodney writes off as an accident. Everyone does it at some point, especially with seats as small as these. He’s probably just rearranging, and then he’ll lay off. The second and the third time? Okay, whatever. Annoying, but ultimately not worth starting something over.

But the guy just _keeps doing it_. Every five to ten minutes, like clockwork, just as the action is starting to ramp up on screen, his knees will dig into the back of Rodney’s chair. Or his heels will scrabble against the arm rests, like he’s trying to put his feet up on Rodney’s chair. And okay, nobody has ever called Rodney patient. Nobody ever _will_ call Rodney patient. The very idea is laughable.

He’s grinding his teeth, _this_ close to snapping, when he hears the guy lean forward in his seat, close enough that Rodney can feel his breath on the back of his neck. The guy breathes a little loudly for a moment, and then he says, “That guy kind of looks like Ronon, don’t you think?”

Rodney blinks, turning slowly in his seat until John Sheppard’s stupid, smirking face comes into view.

John’s a little older, a little greyer, some of the barely there wrinkles that had only just started to appear the last time Rodney saw him having deepened into thick curving laugh lines at the corners of his eyes and mouth. As Rodney stares at him, jaw slack with disbelief, the smirk widens into something closer to a gleeful grin.

John takes a quick, surreptitious glance around the place, and clearly realizing that neither the twelve year olds or the college students would give half a shit, gracefully vaults himself over the row of seats and flings himself down into the one next to Rodney.

“Come on, McKay,” John says, ducking in close and snatching a handful of popcorn from the bucket sitting in Rodney’s lap. He blinks innocently in Rodney’s direction as he pops a few stolen kernels into his mouth. There’s a distinctly smug air about him. “Don’t tell me you’re speechless.”

“You-” Rodney starts, leaning across the gap in the seats to jab a pointed finger in John’s face. John’s smile widens as he easily brushes Rodney’s finger aside, pointedly turning back towards the screen with one last conspiratorial grin.

“Quiet, Rodney. You’re missing the movie,” he whispers, and _winks_.

Fuming, Rodney turns his attention to the screen as well.

An hour and a half later, Rodney still has no clue how the movie turned out, because every time he started getting into it again, John would shift, or yawn, or _exist_ next to him, and then, when Rodney would glare at him, he’d just give him this sleepy little stupid smile.

It was infuriating. Beyond infuriating. So when the credits start to roll, Rodney huffs grumpily, sets his empty bucket on the sticky floor, and yanks John up and out of his seat by the elbow.

“Hey, hey, don’t you know there are always after credit scenes in movies like these?” John protests as Rodney tows him towards the exit. Rodney turns to look at him incredulously, catching the mournful glance that John throws the screen.

“That’s Marvel,” Rodney tells him, and then hisses like a burnt cat as they emerge into the brightly lit hallway.

Ugh, it’s like the surface of the sun.

Queasy from the popcorn and vaguely disoriented, he spins on his heel and attempts to glower back at John. Turns out, it’s pretty hard to convincingly glower at someone when you can only make out a vague, blurry outline of them, so he mostly just squints in John’s general direction until his vision returns.

When it does, he finds John smirking politely at the hand Rodney still has braced around his elbow.

Belatedly, Rodney drops it.

Blinking slow like some kind of sun-baked reptile, John says, “Also, you’re supposed to throw those buckets away, not leave them for the underpaid workers to pick up. I’m disappointed in you.”

Rodney glares at him.

When John merely quirks an eyebrow in response, Rodney flings his hands up and storms back into the theater to gather up the empty bucket. He stomps back out into the hallway and pointedly chucks it into the bin next to John.

“Happy?” he says from between gritted teeth, the rictus of his set smile feeling alarmingly like the insides of his mouth are full of liquid cement.

John shrugs. “Should have grabbed the cup, too.”

“Oh my god,” Rodney growls, and goes back for the cup.

 

For lack of something better to do, they go to a bar near Rodney’s apartment to catch up. It’s a classy little place with sharp, clean lines and ivory floors polished so smooth that they gleam like marble. The place was designed with a black and white theme in mind, the chairs and furniture stark and modern, the light fixtures all glass with softly glowing orange bulbs. This time of year there are icicles of bright white lights dangling from seemingly every surface and a brilliantly decorated Christmas tree set up in the front window.

Their featured drinks are all jewel-toned cocktails that glow in shades of bright greens, purples, and blues. The concoction that Rodney orders is the toxic lime green of nuclear waste, but tastes a lot like melon when he works up the courage to try it.

John, nursing a bourbon at the corner of his elbow, peers over at Rodney. He’s hiding another smile behind his hand.

“So,” he says, and takes a measured sip of his bourbon. “Like the hat. Looks warm.”

In response, Rodney stares him down and slurps his drink so loudly that the bartender winces from all the way across the room. Rodney resists the urge to self-consciously touch the edge of the soft black skullcap, which yes, is quite warm. Instead, he smacks his lips obnoxiously, and says waspishly, “Turns out you wear a lot of hats when you start prematurely balding.”

John winces. “Is it really premat-”

“Shut it.”

With a snort, John shrugs. “All right, I’m shutting it. Just - are the glasses because you’re getting old too?”

Rodney narrows his eyes. “I _like_ their _look_.”

Also, his vision started going in 2010 and has been creeping steadily downward since, but John doesn’t need to know that. As Rodney watches, he takes another careful swallow of bourbon, his eyes meandering across the open bar until they reach the shock of red on the far side of the room. John blinks and sets his glass down.

“Is that-?”

Rodney sighs. “Yes, it is, and no, I won’t play for you.”

John grins and tips the glass back, downing the rest of his drink in one go. He sends it skittering across the table when he slams it back down again, and with one last devilish smile, goes skipping off across the room before Rodney can catch him.

“Dammit,” Rodney hisses, and sucks down as much of his cocktail as he can, then helplessly follows John.

The piano stands in a little alcove near the back of the bar, the bright red varnish alarmingly bright against the black and white. Rodney’s always noticed it - hard not to what with it being the only true touch of color in this place - but he’s never come close enough to touch. He always thought that it would be too tempting.

Turns out he was right, he thinks, eying it with faint trepidation as he approaches. John has already poured himself onto the bench, and is playfully patting the spot beside him.

“Come on, Rodney,” he calls with a lopsided smile. “Promise that we won’t bite.”

“Yeah, I’ll bet you won’t,” Rodney murmurs, taking a careful seat next to him. This close, he can feel the warmth of John’s calf pressed against his, smell the spicy-sweet soap that he uses. He breathes deep and for a moment, he loses himself, lost in time. John is close and he smells and smiles just the way he used to. He still makes Rodney’s heart turn over in his chest - still seems to be able to undo him with something as simple as taste or touch or smell.

It hurts in a strange, vaguely good sort of way, like prodding at an old bruise.

The moment passes, fleeting, except for the nervous turn of his stomach.

John is watching him knowingly, smiling with his eyes more than his mouth. Even with grey at his temples and lines on his face, he’s still lovely.

“Go on,” he urges. “Think you can still play one of these things?”

Rodney rolls his eyes, cracking his knuckles reluctantly. “I know what you’re doing. I just want you to know that.”

“Who,” John asks, eyes positively sparkling with mischief. “Me?”

Rodney closes his eyes when he plays. It’s better that way if he’s doing something from memory. And it’s been a very, very long time.

Somewhere along the line, he distantly realizes that the jazzy Christmas music has stopped, which means that someone has stopped it, which means that people are _listening_ \- and for a moment, the idea of that is too much for him.

And then John touches the back of one trembling hand, gently, just with the pads of his fingers. The touch lasts an instant, a fraction of an instant, but it’s enough. Rodney forgets about the people.

He taps out the first faltering notes of Bach’s Goldberg Variations, his fingers stumbling over a few keys before he manages to right himself. He plays Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata and Chopin’s Nocturne, slowly at first, meticulously tapping away at the keys until something kicks over in his chest, and he starts to pick up speed, the tempo coming more easily the longer he plays.

He trips into one of those nameless Christmas songs he’s picked up along the years, then mockingly taps out the first few lines of Piano Man, just to hear John snort with laughter.

They’re all recognizable pieces, all things that John would have heard in passing, because even lost to the music Rodney is tethered to the minute vibrations of John’s body against his, how he’s gone tight and quiet and breathless at Rodney’s side.

His fingers knock out a playful rhythm against the keys and inside his head he hears Julie Andrews singing:  _these are a few of my favorite things_.

It’s wild. It’s thrilling. It makes his chest ache when he has to force himself to still his fingers against the keys after the last song, the sound of it still drumming into him at his core. He’s damp with sweat and his wrists ache, and there are tipsy coeds whistling and applauding over by the bar, but the only thing that Rodney can see is John, wide-eyed and red-cheeked at his side.

Rodney has to lick his lips twice in order to speak, and even then, it’s only a hoarse croak, barely words at all.

“I don’t know, John,” he murmurs, and knows that his voice is pitched too low, too raspy, too wanting. “What do you think? Think I can still play?”

John blinks, and Rodney thinks that he hears the unspoken challenge there. The invitation.

John swallows and asks, “Where did you say your apartment was again?”

 

There’s a moment there, during the ten minute walk from the bar to his apartment, where he realizes that this could be whatever he wants. That it could just be a nightcap between old friends, that they could drink coffee and talk about how Teyla and Ronon are doing and that would be it. That _could_ be it.

He could let this night pass them by, and he would lose John- slowly, bit by bit, subsisting only on postcards until even that's gone.

Then, as they’re climbing the stairs to his apartment, John nervously loops an arm around his waist. Rodney looks at him, surprised, and sees that same realization - that same _fear_ there - reflected in John’s eyes. They could leave it at this, and their friendship would keep going for a few more years, riding on fumes. And then it would peter out.

Neither of them want that, he thinks, watching John watch him.

John licks his lips as they reach the landing, and daringly presses closer, until he’s crowded Rodney up against the door. Rodney’s heart hitches, and he waits to breathe.

“I could be reading this wrong-” John murmurs quietly, creeping ever closer, until his breath is fogging the air between them. He tips his head a fraction of an inch and presses a sweet kiss to the hinge of Rodney’s jaw.

Rodney tilts his head back, making room for John there, at his throat.

“You’re not,” he says, breathless.

“You sure?”

John sounds like he’s smirking, his lips still pressed to Rodney’s skin. He bites down, carefully, until Rodney gasps.

Rodney breathes in deeply through his nose, steadies himself, and lets himself look at John - really _look_. His ears are red where they’re sticking out over the woolen scarf he has looped several times around his neck. His mouth is red and wet, and still hovering just an inch or so out of reach. His eyes are pleading.

With a shock, Rodney realizes that John wants this just as much as him. Maybe more than him.

Maybe he always did.

Rodney seizes John by the ends of his scarf and reels him in the rest of the way.

John’s lips are cold, but they warm up quick.

“I’m sure,” Rodney tells him when they pull away from one another a minute later, gasping and red-cheeked from something more than the cold.

He takes John by the hand, and tugs him over the threshold.

 

“Why didn’t we do this ten years ago?” Rodney asks deliriously an hour later.

John snorts.

“You were straight,” he says, cuddling closer with his eyes still closed. He pauses, brows furrowing. “Also, you had a girlfriend.”

“Nice try, but I was in love with you for three whole years before I had that girlfriend,” Rodney tells him with a scoff, purposefully shaking John loose and turning towards the nightstand, which he begins to blindly rummage through. “I mean,” he continues, “you were always a decent pair of legs, and it’s not like I would have said _no_ , but, what can you do. Three whole _years_ I held that torch for you before Jennifer came along.”

John has gone still next to him. “What about Katie?”

“Who?” Rodney asks, and then winces. “Oh, right. Katie.”

“Yes, Katie,” John says drily. “The person you nearly proposed to?”

“ _Technically_ , I did propose to her. And I'll admit that wasn’t exactly my best moment,” he admits, giving up on the nightstand and wincingly pushing himself to his feet. The bathroom isn’t too far away, and a warm towel would feel a whole lot better than wipes, even if the linoleum is freezing this time of night. “I may have been trying to pretend that I wasn’t head over heels for you when I first asked her out. I liked her, and she was nice, but. Well. She wasn’t you. It took me awhile to realize that.”

“...Ah,” he hears John murmur from the next room. Rodney pauses, wringing out the towel into the sink. He cleans himself up, and because he’s nice, wets it down again before rounding the corner into the bedroom.

“Ah?” Rodney asks, tossing the towel onto John’s chest before he crawls back into the bed. “Ah? What does that mean?”

John shrugs, but has the decency to look sheepish as he scrubs at the mess on his abdomen. When he’s done, he flings the towel towards the bathroom, where it lands on the linoleum with a wet sounding plop. His ears are endearingly red. “Just means that I was an idiot.”

Rodney looks at him, really looks at him. John is carefully not looking at him.

He narrows his eyes. “How long was it for you?”

John shrugs again, an abrupt jerky motion of the shoulders that he aborts halfway through. The flush has spread to his cheeks. “Too long. Think it might have been our second or third week in Atlantis? At least when it started.”

Rodney looks at him for a moment, then sighs, flopping backwards onto the pillows and throwing a hand over his eyes.

“Yeah, okay,” he says. “We were idiots.”

John groans a little, then shimmies closer, until he can loop an arm around Rodney’s waist and tug him in close.

“Better late than never?” The words come out half-muffled against Rodney’s shoulder.

Rodney snorts. “Yeah, sure, I _guess_. But man, think of all the limber sex we could have been having if we’d started all this when we were younger though.”

John looks at him. “Limber?”

Rodney shrugs. “You were very bendy. I distinctly remember this fact.”

“I’m _still_ bendy.”

“Don’t worry,” Rodney tells him with a yawn, giving him a consoling pat on the arm. “You can prove it tomorrow.”

He can feel it when John squirms uncomfortably against him. Rodney opens his eyes and squints suspiciously in John’s direction. “What are you hiding?”

“We _might_ be busy tomorrow.”

Rodney squints harder. “We?”

“Yeah,” John says, and licks his lips. Then he sighs and turns to fix Rodney with a serious look. It’s a look that Rodney recognizes, even if he hasn’t seen it in over a decade.

Rodney regards him warily. “You didn’t come here for the sex, did you?”

“No,” John says. He gives Rodney a lopsided smile. “That was an unexpected bonus.”

Rodney sighs. “What exactly are we doing tomorrow?”

John leans in close, until his lips are all but touching Rodney’s ear. Even now, fifteen minutes post orgasm, the touch of it gives Rodney the shivers.

“We’re going to jail break Atlantis,” he whispers, and for a moment they just look at each other.

Then Rodney smiles.

“Yeah,” he says. “All right. Count me in.”


End file.
